SUN HORSE & SPIRALS IN EARLY BRITAIN 287

The traditional worship of "Odinn's horses" still persists in some parts of England-for example in Sussex, where I observed bunches of corn tied up to the gables of several old timbered cottages and steadings, and was told that it was to feed " Odinn's horses" as a propitiation against lightning bolts. Offerings of grain to Indra's Sun-horses are repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic hymns; and the horses are invoked also in prayers as the vehicle for Indra's visitations:

They who for Indra, picture his horses in their mind,
And harness them to their prayers,

Attain by such (pious) deeds an (acceptable) offering."-
-R.V., I, 20, 2.

The Sun-horse of the Ancient Britons is also the source of the modern superstition regarding the good luck of finding a horse-shoe pointing towards you-on the notion that it might have been dropped by Odinn's horse.

The Spirals also, which are found on British coins (as in Fig. 44, etc.), on Bronze Age work and on prehistoric monuments and rocks in Britain, and usually in series of twos, are already found in Sumerian, Hittite and Phoenician Seals, and as a decorative device on vases, etc., in old Phoenician settlements in Cyprus and Crete and along the Mediterranean. Yet the meaning of this spiral does not appear to have been hitherto elicited. It is now seen by our new evidence to represent the dual phases of the Sun of the Sumerians. The right-handed or westward moving spiral represented the Day Sun, and the left-handed or eastward moving spiral represented the "returning" Sun at Night—as we have already seen illustrated through the Sumerian cup-marks with standard Sumerian script and on the amulets of Troy. The concentric "Rings," which have usually a radial "gutter," and are often arranged in twos and sometimes threes, now appear to be merely an easy way, by means of the "gutter," of giving the effect of a spiral.

And so widespread was Sun-worship" formerly in Ancient Britain, and so famous in antiquity were the

Ancient Britons as "Sun-worshippers," that Pliny remarks that the Ancient Persians, who are generally regarded as the pre-eminent Sun-worshippers of the Old World, actually seemed to have derived their rites from Britain.1

These further facts in regard to the source and prevalence of "Sun-worship" and Bel-Fire rites in the religion of the One God in Early Britain furnish additional proof that these elements of the Higher Civilization and Religion and their names were introduced into the British Isles by the Aryan Barat Catti, or Brito-Phoenicians.

FIG. 44A. St. John-the-Baptist with his Cross-sceptre

1 Nat. Hist., 30.

FIG. 44B.-Ancient Briton coin with Corn Sun-Cross,
Andrew's X Cross, Sun-horse, etc.

(After Poste.)

XX

SUN CROSS OF HITTO-PHOENICIANS IS ORIGIN OF
PRE-CHRISTIAN CROSS ON BRITON COINS AND
MONUMENTS AND OF THE "CELTIC" AND
"TRUE" CROSS IN CHRISTIANITY

Disclosing Catti," Hitt-ite" or Gothic Origin of" Celtic"
or Runic Cross, Fiery Cross, Red Cross of St. George,
Swastika and "Spectacles," Crosses on Early
Briton Coins, etc.; introduction of True
Cross into Christianity by the Goths;

and ancient "Brito-Gothic"
Hymns to the Sun.

STILL further striking new evidence of the Phoenician origin of the Britons and Scots, properly so-called, and of their Civilization and pre-Christian Religion of the Cross, and of its effect upon the British form of Christianity is now discovered through the Sun Cross on the Phoenician monument at Newton, and on so many of the other pre-Christian monuments in Britain, and on the Early Briton pre-Roman Catti Coins, and in the Runic or so-called "Celtic" Cross, the Fiery Cross, the Red Cross of St. George,

'T. Darcy McGee in Lyra Celtica, ed. E. A. Sharpe, 366.

the crosses of the Union Jack and associated Crosses on the Scandinavian ensigns.

The name " Cross" is now discovered to be derived from the Sumerian (i.e. Early Phoenician) word Garza, which is defined as "Sceptre or Staff of the Sun-God," and also "Sceptre of the King." And its word-sign is pictured by the two-barred Cross, or battle-axe (Khat the root of Khat-ti or Hittite, see Fig. 46 b) springing from the rayed Sun (Fig. 46 g). In its simpler form it is the Cross of the Trojan amulets (Fig. 31 a, p. 238, and Fig. 46 h & t); and it survives to the present day in practically its original form in the "Mound" symbol of sovereignty (Fig. 47 H) borne in the hand of kings in the modern Aryanized world.

The Sun Cross, engraved by our Phoenician Cassi, king of the Scots, on his votive pillar at Newton to the Sun-god Bil, and engraved on many other pre-Christian monuments (see Fig. 47), and stamped upon many Early Briton coins (Fig. 3, etc.), now supplies us for the first time with the key to the manner in which the True Cross or "Fiery Cross " emblem of Universal Victory of the Sun-God Bil, which is figured so freely upon Hittite and Sumerian sacred seals from the fourth millennium B.C. onwards, was substituted in Christianity by the Goths for the Crucifix of Christ-which Crucifix was of quite a different shape from the True Cross or Sun Cross, now used in modern Christianity.

2

The earliest form of the True Cross or Sun Cross was, I find, the shape +, wherein the arms are of equal length -the so-called "Greek Cross" and "Red Cross of St. George," and "The Short Cross" of numismatists. It occurs in this form as the symbol for the Sun and its God in the sacred seals of the Hitto-Sumerians from the fifth

1 Br. 5644 and 5647.

2 This is given as the first sign in the Ogam inscription on the Newton Stone, as transcribed by Mr. Brash (B.O.I., 361); and a personal examination of the stone supports the view that it was not merely a vertical stroke but bore a horizontal stem" line, though the latter is now somewhat scaled off. In any case the long single-stroke Ogam sign is represented as in the Ogam alphabet; and see Fig. 46a.

"

ORIGIN OF CROSS AS DIVINE SYMBOL 291

millennium B.C. downwards; and it thus becomes evident why it is called "The Red Cross of St. George of Cappadocia," as it was "The Fire Cross" of the Hittites, whose chief centre was Cappadocia. It was very freely used also, as we have seen (Fig. 12, p. 49 and Fig. 46), by the Aryan "Cassi " Dynasty of Babylonia from about 1800 to 1100 B.C., decorated by borderlines as their emblem for the Sun and its God. It was ordinarily called "The Wooden Bar or Mas," that is, literally, in English, "The Bar or Mace (in sense of a sceptre)," and thus discloses incidentally the Sumerian origin of those two English words; and it is figured as a sceptre in the hand of the Sun God in early Sumerian sacred seals. It was also called Pir with meaning of "Fire," thus disclosing the Sumerian origin of our English words" Fire" and "Pyre," Gothic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Old English Fyr "Fire" and the Greek "Pyr."

This form of the True Cross, which occurs on so many pre-Christian monuments in Britain, is called by modern ecclesiastic writers "The Greek Cross," merely because it was adopted by the Greek Christian Church about the fifth century A.D. as the form of the Christian emblem for their converts in the old Gothic region of Byzantium, who had been using this Gothic Cross as their sacred emblem from time immemorial. And it is noteworthy that the Greek Church, as well as the crusaders later, continued to use this cross in its old original Catti or Gothic sense, as a simple symbol of Divine Victory and not as a crucifix, never representing any body thereon; but, on the contrary, they usually colour it red, its original colour, as the red or fiery Cross of Fire.

The origin of this earliest form of the True Cross, I find, was the crossing of the twin tinder sticks used for producing by their friction the sacred fire, symbolizing the Sun's Fire. And this same process, which is still used for fire-production by primitive tribes in India, America, etc., at the present

See illustrations in W.S.C., W.S.M. and H.H.S.

2 Br. 1724.

9 See numerous examples figured in S.S.S. for Scotland and W.L.W. for Wales. There is no corresponding work for England.